David Evan Thomas (b. 1958)

The music of David Evan Thomas has been praised for its eloquence, power and craft. A recipient of an Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two McKnight Foundation Fellowships (2013, 1992) and the Möller-A.G.O. Award in Choral Composition, Thomas has received commissions from the Minnesota Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, The Schubert Club, the American Composers Forum and the American Guild of Organists. He has twice been a resident artist at both Wyoming’s Ucross and Brush Creek Arts Foundations, and he spent May 2015 at California’s Villa Montalvo. Works by Thomas have recently received a Minnesota Sinfonia/McKnight Foundation New Works Award and the Renée B. Fisher Composer Award for 2017.

Thomas’s music is published by ECS, Augsburg Fortress, MorningStar, Jeanné, Fatrock Ink and Classical Vocal Reprints, receiving performances by the Minnesota Orchestra, London’s Westminster Cathedral Choir and the trio of Gil Shaham, Truls Mørk and Yefim Bronfman. Thomas has served as composer-in-residence with Westminster Presbyterian Church (Minneapolis), the Cathedral of Saint Paul, and from 1997-2005, The Schubert Club.

Born in Rochester, New York in 1958, David Evan Thomas received degrees from Northwestern University, Eastman School of Music and the University of Minnesota. His teachers included Dominick Argento, Samuel Adler and Alan Stout, with further study at the Aspen Festival and with David Diamond at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Thomas lives in Minneapolis, where he is also active as a program annotator, choral singer and pianist. More: www.davidevanthomas.com.